Discussion
His theory is either wrong or incomplete because I went the other direction. For 7 years I had nothing in common with progressives, then the reaction to this situation in Israel was the first time in ages where they made sense to me again.
He can only hold the opinion he has by pretending Israel has been nice to Palestine and Palestine out of the blue based on raw hate with no reason for that hate decided to murder innocent people because they fundamentally have a death based ideology.
If he spent a day really talking to Palestinians he would hear a very different perspective. If he spent time in the West Bank then I think his illusions about what Israel is doing would fall away.
The insanely abused lashed out against what they see as the abuser. Horrible that innocent people were caught up in that. But he has no sense of perspective.
That's my opinion. I hope not to anger anyone with that opinion. I respect your right to disagree
From: mikedilger at 11/03 09:03
From my point of view OCT 7th makes all previous history irrelevant. There is no point to searching for the "justification" of that event because the event cannot _AND MUST NOT_ be justified. Innocent people were not "caught up" in that event. Innocent people were _targetted_ -- and not just targetted for murder; but targetted for torture of the most barbaric, heinous, and intensely personal kind.
The event was planned and executed with the same motivation, deliberation, and care as the Nazi's train schedules and ovens.
The suffering of the Palestinian people is now entirely due to the actions of Hamas; and it will end when Hamas unconditionally surrenders, or is destroyed. There is no other option.
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We disagree as to the facts. And as to perspective. I hear only one side extremism from you so I don't think discussion is a good idea.
From: mikedilger at 11/03 09:52
> We disagree as to the facts. And as to perspective. I hear only one side extremism from you so I don't think discussion is a good idea.
I hope we do not disagree as to the facts of Oct 7th.
This is the second time you have made a public accusation against my character. Last week you accused me of supremacism, and now you are accusing me of extremism. I have made no accusations or intimations against you at all. I suggest that you adjust your debating stragegy. Ad hominem attacks are evidence that your argument is weak.
This is also the second time you have engaged with me, and then backed away. In for a penny, in for a pound, I say.
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OK I backed away for your benefit, clearly that was not appreciated so I will persist.
I will explain my accusation which was as to what you said not who you are. Unfortunately I can't read your post as I type lemme try another nostr client.
Also I hate how arguing makes me feel. My blood pressure jacks up and I get knots in my stomach. I'm naturally an agreeable person not a disagreeable one who enjoys argument. But I argue anyways out of a sense of duty.
I'm sorry your blood pressure spikes. Perhaps your first choice was the right one, and you should avoid discussions like this. For my part, I enjoy the repartee' and exchange so I walk away happy; and I figure everyone else does too. If you don't, then taking care of yourself comes first. You have no duty to engage with me if it's harmful to your health and happiness. You and I are not going to solve the Isreal/Palistine issue here.
I leave it to you. I will not respond to your previous post on Hama's claims unless you'd like me to. But that's a one time offer.
If, in the future, you respond to one of my posts, you can be very sure that I will respond in kind.
From: mikedilger at 11/03 12:00
> Also I hate how arguing makes me feel. My blood pressure jacks up and I get knots in my stomach. I'm naturally an agreeable person not a disagreeable one who enjoys argument. But I argue anyways out of a sense of duty.
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I appreciate the concern. But not responding isn't an offer I wish to accept. If you have anything to say I'm always grateful to hear it. I just posted to another one of your posts this same point but it bears repeating. Never presume I wish for your silence. Your posts do not spike my blood pressure, but sometime my responses do, especially if I post too rapidly and then regret what I said. I am trying to learn not to respond too quickly.
You said the following things that I find to be extreme:
All previous history is irrelevant.
Events must not be justified.
(Victims were) targeted for not just murder but torture of the most barbaric heinous and intensely personal kind (I think that is extreme with the facts)
All their suffering is entirely Hama's fault
I find all those views to be extreme.
From: mikedilger at 11/03 10:17
> You said the following things that I find to be extreme:
>
> All previous history is irrelevant.
>
> Events must not be justified.
>
> (Victims were) targeted for not just murder but torture of the most barbaric heinous and intensely personal kind (I think that is extreme with the facts)
>
> All their suffering is entirely Hama's fault
>
> I find all those views to be extreme.
Firstly, I appreciate you being worried about my "benefit". But don't worry. I'm a big boy.
It is perfectly valid to say that you believe some of my stated ideas to be extreme. I'll happily disagree; and we can debate those ideas.
It is not valid to say: "I hear only one side extremism from you." That is an ad hominem attack, and a false generalization that goes well beyond the ideas that I had stated.
Now, as to my assertion that the events of Oct 7th "must not be justified". What justification can there be for putting infants into ovens and roasting them alive? What justification can there be for descending on a dance concert with a squadron of ultra-light aircraft and spraying the dancers with automatic weapon fire? I could go on. You know the atrocities that were committed. I'm sure you've seen the videos taken by the perpetrators and heard the testimony of the survivors.
There can be no justification for such actions. No matter how oppressed, subjucated, and violated you have been; you cannot roast babies alive. And since such atrocities were not isolated, but were generally executed across the entire attack; and since the perpetrators filmed and posted their attacks to the cheers of many, and since they phoned home to brag about killing jews with their bare hands, it is clear that the atrocities were the point, and not just incidental.
In a moral society, we have to draw moral lines. Without those lines there is no morality. Such lines are not extreme; they are necessary to maintain the definition of morality. Therefore we must not attempt to justifiy actions that cross those lines. If we try, we will find ourselves erasing all moral lines and justifying the horrors of Auschwitz.
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Thanks for standing up and stating it so clear: There can be no justification for such atrocities. Never ever! ❤
If you ignore all history your moral lines will shift markedly. Capital punishment appears as murder. A retaliation becomes an attack. In fact it is possible to view Hamas's attacks as slow motion retaliations that happened much later because it takes a very long time to prepare in their condition.
Some people have different moral rules. An eye for an eye combined with collective guilt (or just the belief that all adult Israelis serve in the IDF thus they are all guilty and legit targets) would insist that Palestine is owed tens of thousands of eyes from any Israeli they can get them from. This is NOT my view. I am highlighting a deep flaw in the very idea of being guided by morals outside of a population that shares the same morals.
Having said that, should I abandon sympathy for Palestinian children because their society runs on different moral codes,? Is it okay to treat them as animals and exterminate them because by following their moral guidelines they threaten my society?
I think not but I don't have the answers.
From: mikedilger at 11/03 18:59
> If you ignore all history your moral lines will shift markedly.
I don't think that's true. There are some moral absolutes.
>Capital punishment appears as murder.
No, it appears as killing, but not as murder. One can question the morality of capital punishment without calling it murder. The same is true of abortion.
>A retaliation becomes an attack. In fact it is possible to view Hamas's attacks as slow motion retaliations that happened much later because it takes a very long time to prepare in their condition.
Retaliations are provoked attacks. Whether they are moral depends on the conditions. If two parties agree to stop fighting, and then one suddenly "retaliates" then that party has crossed the moral line.
> Some people have different moral rules.
I don't fully agree. There are certain absolutes that some people rationalize away. Or, perhaps a better way to say this is that some people's morals are not valid because they cross the absolute moral lines. A sociopath, like Hitler, may consider themself to be moral; but their morality is not valid. Who defines the line of validity? We do. We organize our societies around those lines. When two societies disagree on those lines there is likely to be war.
> Having said that, should I abandon sympathy for Palestinian children because their society runs on different moral codes,?
No, because you (and I, and all moral people) have certain absolute morals the demand that sympathy.
> Is it okay to treat them as animals and exterminate them because by following their moral guidelines they threaten my society?
Animals? No, for the same reason. But that doesn't mean you won't fight them if they come for you and your family.
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You missed my point, but also I now see that we are much further separated ideologically than I had thought. This issue is not between us, but we are just opining on it, Yet I get the sense to no benefit. So I wish you well and I will voice my opinions on this matter in a nostr community I setup after I do the prerequisite coding. Thanks for engaging with me and being civil.
I regret this post. I misunderstood the note it was in reply to. I don't think we are so far separated. I did not wish to fire off posts and refuse replies as some dabate tactic. I'm sad I have so few replies from the good Uncle now and fear I have made a mistake.
Fear not. You are a programmer and my brother. I spend an hour or so per day on nostr and then I do other work. So If I don't respond immediately it is often because I'm busy. I also took your last message to mean you wanted a pause. I tried to zap you in response but getalby was apparently down or something.
From: mikedilger at 11/04 20:11
> I regret this post. I misunderstood the note it was in reply to. I don't think we are so far separated. I did not wish to fire off posts and refuse replies as some dabate tactic. I'm sad I have so few replies from the good Uncle now and fear I have made a mistake.
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Ok this point needs clarification. Twice now you've presumed any expression of weariness from me means that I want you to stop posting. Never have I meant that. I respect more speech, in more ways than one ;-). What I am signalling is that I may become less engaged. I am not asking for you to hold back your opinion, rather I'm letting you know that I may be holding back mine, that I may back away for a bit. But there are watchers who will see your reply, and they should hear it if you have something more to tell. When I mentioned that I get knots in my stomach, this is not in response to your posts, it is in response to my own posts.
OK. Understood.
From: mikedilger at 11/06 02:10
> Ok this point needs clarification. Twice now you've presumed any expression of weariness from me means that I want you to stop posting. Never have I meant that. I respect more speech, in more ways than one ;-). What I am signalling is that I may become less engaged. I am not asking for you to hold back your opinion, rather I'm letting you know that I may be holding back mine, that I may back away for a bit. But there are watchers who will see your reply, and they should hear it if you have something more to tell. When I mentioned that I get knots in my stomach, this is not in response to your posts, it is in response to my own posts.
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In this note I am saying morality is stateful, not that it is relative. If I could murder and then wipe the state, I would get away with it.
I'm sure we do disagree as to the facts if October 7. I reviewed hours of disgusting videos. I then listened to Hamas repr in Lebanon explain. His words were consistent with the videos. Israels were not. If you think the videos must then be biased, they were from Ben Shapiro.
From: mikedilger at 11/03 10:29
> I'm sure we do disagree as to the facts if October 7. I reviewed hours of disgusting videos. I then listened to Hamas repr in Lebanon explain. His words were consistent with the videos. Israels were not. If you think the videos must then be biased, they were from Ben Shapiro.
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I'm having trouble parsing your statement. I agree that the disgusting videos were consistent with some of the statements from Hamas. One in particular said that there will be many more Oct 7ths to come. I believe that is his intent, and the intent of Hamas. I heard one Hamas spokesman try to state that civilians were not targetted. That's patently absurd since so many civilians were killed in abhorent ways. That particular spokesman then walked away from the interview refusing to answer why so many individuals were tortured and killed.
I've also listened to the Isrealis, and their accounts are also consitent with the videos and the testimony.
So, with the exception of the one Hamas guy who claimed that civilians were not the target, I find both Hamas and Isreal to be in agreement about Oct 7th.
I'm not sure what Ben Shapiro has to do with anything, or why you thought you should bring him into this argument. I'll agree with you that he is not neutral in this situation; but then who could be?
Are you suggesting that the videos that you and I both saw, and the testimony that you and I both heard, were somehow faked? Is it your contention that Israel took a small event, and enlarged it as an excuse to declare war on Hamas?
Hama's claims they went after IDF soldiers in their beds before sunrise. That explains many dead bodies being almost all men. I saw very little evidence if dead children. Some burned out in a car are disputed whose weapon did that. Hama's rockets aren't that powerful. I heard an Israeli woman from the Nova nature rave say that many of the people were killed by IDF crossfire, super intense killing everyone to make sure they killed the terrorists. This is the Hannibal directive. Israel blames all death they dirextly caused via the Hannibal directive on Hamas. So they show bodies killed by IDF and sell it to their people as being killed by Hamas in some cases. Also non-Hamas extremists took advantage of the gaps in the wall and raped, tortured, etc, and Hanas says it was not them . I don't believe Hama's or Israel, but the Hamas story is plausible. Israels has sone gaps given so many dead men vs women and children, no beheaded babies, etc. I do not know what is actually true, I can only weigh the very incomplete evidence I have.
Ben Shapiro made a point to show what Hama's did in its full disgusting way to convince people Hamas is evil, and so I thought he would have incentive to show the most evil stuff.
Let me be very clear. I do not defend any killings. I think life is precious. I think Hamas is bad. So was hiroshima, carpet Bombing of Dresden, and bombing if Gaza.
I think kidnapping is morally preferable to murder and was a smart strategic move, but still immoral on the whole.
Both sides craft a narrative that places all the blame on the other side. I think the blame is a giant mess on both sides.
If one side sees (or imagines) a tiger in a cage poked at and shot through the ankles, having poked his paw out to claw blood from his captor, those onlookers cheering such violence can be understood. It is not that surprising that people will cheer when the little guy gets a punch in, even if you abhor all the fighting. It doesn't require any fucked up ideology.
From: mikedilger at 11/03 09:44
> It is not that surprising that people will cheer when the little guy gets a punch in.
"The Little Guy" -> An army of organized terrorists funded by a vast array of anti-Israel forces from around the world who dominate the UN, academia, and the global media.
"A Punch" -> The carefully planned indiscriminate slaughter and barbaric torture of innocent woman, children, and families in their homes minding their own business.
You are right that it is not surprising to see the cheering. It is, however, disgusting, disturbing, and terrifying. They cheered when the towers fell too. And though they may not have cheered as the ovens fired, there was an awful lot of smug satisfaction.
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